


Reparations

by ScriptrixDraconum



Series: Steel and Roses [14]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fights, First Time, Making Up, Regret, Relationship(s), Self-Hatred, Silence, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-20 05:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3638607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScriptrixDraconum/pseuds/ScriptrixDraconum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esmé Cousland is as furious with Alistair and she is with herself. How could he just leave her there, after she told him that she loved him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Seventeen days.

Through trekking in the wilderness, during battles with darkspawn, and in dealings with the Dalish, it had been seventeen days since Alistair and I had sex. Seventeen days of no eye contact, of no communication whatsoever with the man I admitted to myself as well as him that I loved. Seventeen days of being forced to carry the shield for Zevran and Morrigan while Leliana and Sten aided Alistair. I was lucky I had my one-handed sword and my shield still with us, lucky that Bodhan had kept them, and lucky Wynne was able to heal Alistair and me separately. The groupings were nothing new, but the teamwork and balance we seven had developed over the months had vanished, and everyone but Alistair made comments regarding such.

For an entire week after Alistair and I were together, I worried that I might have conceived. Without Gilmore around, I had not been taking any precautions. Granted, my monthly bleeding had become somewhat irregular since my Joining, but I still bled. I considered myself lucky the day I confirmed the lack of a mini ‘Alisme’ within me.

When we finally set up camp in the devastation that used to be Ostagar, I was nearing my limit of remorse and self-loathing. I was also exhausted. Darkspawn had remained in the area, and we must have fought wave after wave on and off for hours, well after the sun had set. After a full day of travel, this was not an easy task. Everyone was grumpy, in particular my fellow warden who didn’t even bother setting up a tent. Instead, Alistair patrolled the area with Potato.

No more darkspawn bothered us during the night.

The next morning, I was sitting on the grass near our campfire which Morrigan had kept lit. I was left alone, thankfully, and became lost in my own thoughts.

While on the road from the Dalish camp, I had barely registered the gossip of my companions. But I knew full well that they knew what had happened between Alistair and me. It was hard to miss, with Alistair stomping back to camp, naked, and me following not long after, also naked. The fact that we didn’t stomp back together, nor slept in the same tent afterwards, likely struck the others as odd.

Leliana was the only one to speak with me on the matter, and what she guessed was the matter with Alistair made a lot of sense to me. He was a romantic. Goofy and sarcastic, but still a romantic. He was also older than the average virgin, and had likely built up images in his mind of the perfect first kiss, the perfect first night together, the perfect wedding…. I knew this was true, after his ‘second first kiss’ insistence. The other issue, I guessed, was that Alistair might have felt my confession of love was insincere, driven by heightened emotions. True, Gilmore had just died. Also true, I had loved him. I still loved him. But I knew that what I felt for Alistair was genuine. The feeling had been with me for some time – I had just ignored it.

After realizing the problem, that Alistair had likely planned for his first time having sex to be more special than fucking on a rock in the cold rain, I felt especially guilty. Not only had I made our first kiss something that had to be overwritten in his memory, I had done the exact same thing to his first sexual experience. Thinking back to the night I had kissed him, gaining a reaction from his body and yet being told to stop, I began to wonder if Alistair actually wanted to have sex at all.

No, he did. He told me that he did. He just didn’t want to do anything outside of a tent, or perhaps wanted to wait until we were at least in a tavern bed.

“Damn it,” I grumbled, and threw into the campfire a pebble I had been palming.

As much as I was angry with myself for enticing Alistair, I was also upset with him. Though he likely didn’t know better, didn’t know I had not finished as he had, he had left me there, sitting on that rock. He was better than that. I understood that he was upset at the time, perhaps even livid, but even a virgin should have known one should never fuck and run, _particularly_ after being told that they were loved.

_Loved._

“Asshole,” I muttered as I kicked at the grass.

“Ah, maybe now isn’t the best time,” Alistair’s voice lulled behind me. I turned around to see him begin to walk away, one hesitant step at a time.

“Alistair….”  I wanted to yell at him, but I held my tongue. Fortunately, my tone indicated that he would be wise not to walk away, and he promptly turned back around and sat next to me with a quiet sigh.

And then, we said nothing. The campfire danced and Sten fed it more wood. Zevran could be heard in the near distance, snoring loudly. Leliana was humming to herself.

Between Alistair and me stretched more silence, and I couldn’t take it anymore. My mouth formed the words my mind had been thinking over and over and over.

“You just _left_.”

He knew what I meant. He _had_ to have known what I meant. Just to make sure, I turned to him. He was gazing at me, eyes and mouth both frowning. He looked away, and gripped his own fingers.

“I shouldn’t have; I’m sorry.” And he _was_ sorry. I could see that. We were both sorry.

I again forced a question, my voice soft for privacy’s sake as well as due to my own personal fear of an honest answer.

“Do you regret it?”

I watched Alistair’s hands. At my last word, they tensed. His left hand gripped the fingers of his right tighter, and then let go. Both sets of fingers curled into loose fists, and each thumb grazed the edge of its neighboring finger. The fingers then flared forcefully, stretching into starbursts before relaxing with palms flattened against the man’s thighs.

“No,” was his answer, but his hands suggested there was more to his feelings. I watched as his left hand stretched towards me, as its fingers curved around my right knee, and as the thumb grazed the hide-covered surface in slow, lazy arcs. “I only wish….”

“Wish it had been different?”

”N-not… _different_ , just…. I don’t know. I don’t know what. You were crying, Esmé. It was cold and raining and your lover had just died. I just—“ Alistair lifted clenched fists as he growled at himself. Sighing again, he continued. “It was supposed to happen differently.”

“Supposed to?”

“Should have.”

I stared at Alistair, waiting for him to look at me, to explain his answer, but he never did, and I turned my gaze to my bare feet. “Life is not a fairytale, Alistair.”

“Huh?” he asked, turning to me again.

“You can’t wait for the perfect opportunity to do something. Sun shining down on a meadow full of flowers, or a warm bed full of feather pillows. You keep waiting and waiting and waiting and eventually you’ll just get stepped on by an ogre while dreaming of rose scented candles.”

“I’m not dreaming of rose—“

“You _left_ me there! After—“ My breath caught when I looked into his eyes, and the sentence hung unfinished.

Alistair’s pained face said what his mind could not. I watched as his lips parted, and—

“Wardens.” Sten’s commanding voice cut through the anticipation. I craned my neck to meet the towering warrior’s gaze. “The dog found something on the bridge it would like you to see.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair and crew find King Cailan's body at Ostagar, and Esmé Cousland finds something she hopes might make Alistair feel less awful.

“Cut him down.”

Alistair growled the order as he gazed up at the decaying corpse of King Cailan. The darkspawn had strung up the man’s body midway across the crumbling bridge that connected the main sections of Ostagar. Birds, bugs, and all other sorts of scavengers had had their way with the corpse. Zevran lost his lunch at the scene, but Alistair just glowered.

Sten cut the ropes that held Cailan up, catching his body as it drooped down. Oghren used his axe to fell dead trees for a pyre that everyone, save Alistair, built for the dead king. As I grunted under the weight of heavy logs and branches, I wondered where Cailan’s armor was, and why the darkspawn had removed it. I would have been surprised at Cailan’s desecration had I not seen similar displays in various darkspawn camps, but never had I seen a corpse disrobed. The unwelcomed image of some Hurlock wearing Cailan’s gilded armor settled in my mind’s eye.

Alistair threaded his fingers with mine as the flames Morrigan set on the pyre danced high. Leliana gave a Chantry blessing and sang a dirge. Wynne made a speech about all being equal under a blighted sun. After Oghren poured a libation of canteened ale over the flames, Alistair loosened his grip on me and slinked away.

As I watched the flames, I wondered what Alistair might have been about to say before Sten interrupted us. His expression had conveyed regret, as well as something else entirely. The smoke began to sting my eyes, and I decided to walk around the battlefield where both Cailan and Duncan, among too many others, fell.

Walking across the tainted grass and dirt, I forced myself to remember the battle. After much trial, the signal fire had been lit, but it did not matter. Why did Loghain retreat? Common sense was a likely answer. He knew Ostagar was doomed. Perhaps if he had only allowed the Orlesian—

A flash of light to my left interrupted my ponderings. I turned, and saw the flash again. I walked towards it, realizing the glint had come from a blade catching the sun. The elaborate sword was browned with dried blood. Near it laid various pieces of armor, under which remained bits and pieces of dried mortal flesh and bone from at least three people.

I recognized the sword as Duncan’s. Next to it was the crushed, bloodied, gilded armor of our fallen king.

Blade cleaned of encrusted blood, I returned to camp with the hopes of finding my fellow warden, to give him the sword of the man he thought of as a father. Eventually, I found Alistair in the charred remains of where I undertook my Joining. He was sitting on the ground, back pressed against the blackened stone, staring at nothing.

“I thought I might find you here,” I chirped as I joined him in his meditations, sword concealed by a swath of fabric.

After a while of listening to Alistair breathe, I decided to speak again.

“Did you know him well? King Cailan.”

Alistair’s legs slid forward and his body drooped down somewhat. “No. Not really.”

“Did he know who you were? I mean, his half-brother.”

I watched as Alistair shifted his legs about, bending one knee and knotting his fingers around the shin. “Yeah, he knew. The people who needed to know, knew. Even some people who didn’t….” He rolled his shoulder. I knew the man well enough now to recognize the motion as one not of discomfort, but of anxiety.

“I think I found his armor,” I continued. “Where he fell. There were some bones, and weapons.” I glanced to my side to find Alistair still staring into space. “Do you want to retrieve it? Perhaps we can bury it… or put it on his pyre.”

Slowly, Alistair worked into a nod. “Yeah.” His bent leg sank down, joining the other in stretching out.

I placed the wrapped sword on my lap and slid it over onto Alistair’s. “I also found this.”

Alistair took a long moment to touch the object in his lap. He peered at the tattered fabric, expressionless. He eyed it like an unwanted gift he was loath to open. Gingerly, he lifted the folds of the fabric, revealing piecemeal the blade within.

And he stared some more. Alistair did not speak nor did he move for a considerable amount of time. His hands remained at his sides, fists pressed to the stone. His jaw remained clenched. His brow remained furrowed. If I had to guess, I would have said Alistair was fighting off tears.

Perhaps he was waiting for me to leave.

With a small groan, I stood, stretched, and turned back to my fellow warden. Even though his mind was elsewhere, even though he was doing his damnedest not to cry in front of me, I needed to say something lest I never would.

“I’m sorry I took those moments away from you, Alistair.” It was the truth. I was sorry on his part, that he would never get the candles-and-rose-petals first time of which he dreamed. But I, too, was angry, and hurt. A moment had been taken from me, too. An important one. Unanswered _I love you’s_ sat heavy in the stomach.

I watched the man, waiting for a response – a look, a twitch, anything. Receiving nothing, I let out the rest of the words swimming around in my head.

“All I wanted that night was to be held by you.”

With that, I returned to camp.


End file.
